Fra Bartolommeo

Sale, Amsterdam, Frederick Muller,  5-6 July 1927, lot 115 (as Andrea del Sarto)

Chris Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam, Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum, 1990-91, p. 305, note 34, p. 371, reproduced p. 306, figs. 197-8

Generally in good condition. Chalk stronger and more orange in colour than in the catalogue illustration, which appears much weaker and flatter than the original. Traces of some slight staining scattered across the sheet, which is far more visible in the reproduction than in the original, where the paper is quite white. On the verso some of the staining is more visible. Four or five small pin-point holes in the upper section of the sheet.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The reappearance of this handsome and impressive sheet, unseen since 1927 (when it was sold in Amsterdam under the name of Andrea del Sarto), provides a particularly exciting opportunity to focus on the work of Fra Bartolommeo, such a central figure in the Florentine High Renaissance. Although a substantial and well-established corpus of drawings by Fra Bartolommeo survives, these works are almost all preserved in public collections. Especially noteworthy are the two volumes of chalk drawings by the artist, assembled in 1729 by the Florentine collector Nicoló Gaburri, and since 1940 in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. In 1990, those drawings were the focus of a remarkable exhibition in Rotterdam (see Literature), and it was in this exhibition catalogue that Chris Fischer first published the present sheet of head studies. Included in this definitive exhibition were many exceptional drawings by this Dominican friar and great Florentine painter, from all periods of his career, and together with Fischer's very detailed accompanying study, this gave an unprecedented opportunity to understand better Fra Bartolommeo's style and development, and to follow the long and complex creative process that led to his final painted works.

The ten red chalk studies on the recto and verso of the present sheet are related to seven different heads in the artist's late painting, the Madonna della Misericordia of 1515, now in the Museo di Villa Guinigi, in Lucca (fig. 1). On each side of the sheet, there are five separate studies of heads, combined on the page in a very harmonious way, which is entirely characteristic of Fra Bartolommeo's composite study sheets of this type. On the recto, two of the studies relate to the figure of the standing youth leaning with his left arm on the Virgin's throne, while the other three are for different heads on the right side of the painting. On the verso the head in the bottom centre relates to the young boy just behind the kneeling woman in the left foreground of the altarpiece, while the three studies above, of a boy raising his right arm, relate to the next figure above him in the composition. The head and shoulders study of a woman seen in profile could be a preliminary idea for the young girl, slightly higher in the painting, who looks up at the standing youth leaning on the Virgin's throne.     

The altarpiece was commissioned by Fra Sebastiano Lombardi da Montecatini for a chapel he had built opposite the sacristy in the church of San Romano, Lucca. The donor is clearly recognizable to the right, under the protection of St Dominic. The Madonna della Misericordia was the most important altarpiece from this period of Fra Bartolommeo's career, and it is significant that it was executed for a church in Lucca, rather than Florence. The fall of the Florentine republic and the return of the Medici in September 1512 had left Fra Bartolommeo bereft of local patrons, and so it seems that at this time he was forced to seek work outside Florence. This political change may also have been one of the reasons that he went to Rome at about this time - most probably between 1513 and 1514.  There he was able to study the innovative works of both Michelangelo and Raphael, which left a definitive mark on Fra Batolommeo's late style (he was to die only two years after painting the Madonna della Misericordia). 

Until around 1511, Fra Bartolommeo almost always used only black chalk when making his drawings, but thereafter he also began to draw in red chalk, a medium that he may have come to regard as more flexible than black chalk, and better able to give his drawn images vitality and energy. Red chalk was also an ideal and attractive medium for rendering the subtle tonalities of flesh. Leonardo da Vinci seems to have been the first to draw regularly in red chalk, but the medium was soon adopted by many other Renaissance artists, including Raphael. The influence of Raphael is rather evident in some of the heads on the recto of this sheet, although the verso seems instead to demonstrate a subtle link with the work of Andrea del Sarto (to whom the present sheet was, of course, traditionally attributed). Clearly, Fra Bartolommeo's late style is not entirely defined by the strong impact of Raphael and Michelangelo; at this point in his career, he was also learning much from the example of Andrea del Sarto, whose more naturalistic and expressive language infused Fra Bartolommeo's monumental and calculated compositions with an increased vitality. 

The subject of the altarpiece - the Madonna sheltering the believers under a large mantle - was well established when Fra Bartolommeo received his commission. In fact, the idea seems to have originated from the secular administration of justice in the early middle ages, when people of high rank could protect those in danger by sheltering them under their mantle, but the image soon also came to have religious associations. It was most popular initially with the Franciscan and Dominican orders, and depictions frequently show entire communities, families or religious orders under the protection of the mantle of the Virgin. In his painting of the Madonna della Misericordia, Fra Bartolommeo follows the classical structure that was the norm in such compositions, but focuses more than ever before on the variety and rendering of the expressions of the many figures crowding this complex composition, dominated by the solemn gesture of the Madonna. 

This heightened interest in the expressions and emotions of the figures would explain why for this painting, Fra Bartolommeo made particularly careful preparatory studies of the heads and faces of many of the figures in the composition, both important and more peripheral. In addition to those on the present sheet, further similar groups of head studies are to be found on the versos of two larger studies of complete single, figures, now in Cambridge and Rotterdam.¹ The Rotterdam exhibition also included several other preparatory studies for the Madonna della Misericordia, notably a splendid black chalk study for the whole composition;² that drawing is, however, very much a first idea, and Fra Bartolommeo made many changes in arriving at his final solution. A pen and ink fragment, now in the Uffizi, is much closer to the painted version.³ The great majority of the other known preparatory studies for the altarpiece - studies of single figures, their heads or limbs, and figure groups - are executed in red chalk, although (influenced, perhaps, by Andrea del Sarto) Fra Bartolommeo also adopted a combination of black and red chalk during the final stage of his creative process, in a few very handsome preparatory studies for the heads of figures in the foreground of the altarpiece, carefully drawn "portraits", on the same scale as the painted figures. Two of these drawings are in the Rotterdam albums, while another, a beautiful study in black and red chalk for the head of the donor, Sebastiano Lombardi da Montecatini, was (like the albums) in the Koenigs Collection, but was looted during the second World War and is now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.⁴

Fra Bartolommeo holds a distinct and distinguished position amongst the classic painters of the Renaissance.  The esteem in which the artist was held at an early date is demonstrated by a decree on the export of art, issued in 1602 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I, in which Fra Bartolommeo's name appears as one of nineteen artists whose works were not allowed to leave Tuscany without a special permit.  Throughout his career, these works retained a very personal monumentality and solemnity, but all the same his style did develop, reflecting works and artists with which he came into contact, and also other artistic developments taking place around him.  The drawings that he made reflect the prevailing interests and influences of each period of his career, and the present sheet is particularly revealing, giving us a chance to come closer to an artist who played a significant part in the artistic development of the Renaissance in Florence. This remarkable double-sided sheet is the physical evidence of the intensive study of faces and expressions that went into the creation of Fra Bartolommeo's late masterpiece, the Madonna della Misericordia, and also of the close stylistic relationships between the artist and his fellow masters of the Italian Renaissance.

1. Fra Bartolommeo, exh. cat., op. cit., pp. 305-6, no. 81, reproduced and figs. 195-6

2. Ibid., no. 80, reproduced

3. Ibid, p. 300, fig. 193

4. Ibid, pp. 317-9, nos. 88-9, reproduced